Re: The world's first readable calculus

[Ludwik Kowalski <kowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>]

On Mon, 07 Dec 1998 John Trammell wrote:

> ... Perl is an object-oriented language, but the script I wrote uses
> none of those constructs.  It's ideal for these "quick and dirty"
> programs because it's not a compiled language (like C, FORTRAN,
> C++, etc.) and yet it has a complete set of math functions unlike
> other scripting languages.

Doesn't Fortran have these functions as well? Why should "compiled
versus interpreted" make any difference in a code which probably has
less than 50 statements. And why should a language in which your
algorithm was expressed make a difference? It is the algorithm, the
smart part, that I want to understand. You created a program for a
problem which at least 5 out of 10 college students (and many
professors, myself included) would probably not be able to solve
without reading the answer provided by Jack.

 I also tried to create the algorithm but was not successful. Can you
describe the algorithm in a way which could help others to succeed?
Do it in plain English, or in a pseudo language, or in Fortran, etc.
How do you feed information to the program (three statements and
other constrains) and how do you tell the program what you want
in the output? Do you think that object oriented languages are more
appropriate for writing algorithms which solve syllogistic problems
than traditional languages?

> I'd agree that Perl/C/C++ have similar syntax, and so once you
> have the 'skills' to read one, learning to read the others is
> not hard.  But I wouldn't put them in the same class.

Unfortunately I am not familiar with any one of these.
Ludwik Kowalski